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The future of AMD's current flagship graphics card, the Fury X, could be put in jeopardy soon, as Asetek, maker of coolers and cooling systems, has filed a cease and desist against AMD. The reasoning? It claims that the card uses water cooling technology that infringes upon its patents.
There's precedent for this too, as Asetek has previously won a court case against Cooler Master, which provides the CLC for the Fury X. Although it was initially demanded that Cooler Master hand over 14.5 per cent royalties from sale of its Seidon, Nepton and Glacier products to Asetek, when it failed to comply that number was doubled and a cease and desist was applied.
Good thing we got our Fury X sample in when we did…
Because of that, AMD may not be legally allowed to continue selling its Fury X cards equipped with water cooling units, as the design may well have come from Asetek's patents, by proxy.
“Asetek’s attorneys have also written a cease and desist letter to AMD, demanding that it stop selling its Radeon R9 Fury X product, because it infringes Asetek’s patents,” an Asetek spokesperson said to GamersNexus. “Our attorneys have had some difficulty obtaining a Gigabyte GV-N98TXTREME W-6GD, but we expect to receive and analyse one very soon for infringement.”
As the Nexus points out, whether AMD complies with the C&D or not, there's nothing to stop Asetek sending additional orders to retailers to prevent the sale at that point in the chain, which could make it very difficult for AMD to shift units in the future. It may need to pay a licensing fee for the already expensive graphics cards, or push more of the air-cooled variants.
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KitGuru Says: It will be interesting to see if this potential block increases Fury X card sales in the short term.
This Asetek is not selling to OEMs? I mean a dick move like this can’t just go unpunished when the time come for big OEM’s like AMD and Gigabyte to pick a cooling partner.
And coolermaster are idiots or what? Since they lost in the court they should comply and protect their customers…
Anyway AMD will probably give them some money for damages or whatever to avoid pulling the cards and just pick another watercooling solution for the newer ones, big deal.
This kind of thing happens all the time. If it really mattered, Apple would have stopped dealing with Samsung years ago, to name but one example. According to this logic, Asetek should just let companies they have deals with take advantage of their technology.
While I think the patent itself is a load of hooey (due to how incredibly vague it is), legally they’re right about their complaint against CoolerMaster (CMI) and I can’t really complain much about Asetek’s lawsuit against CMI.
The problem I have with it is their following it with a C&D order against AMD. Asetek is already getting a (very very generous) royalty from CMI for those coolers. They’re already getting paid for every unit that CMI sold. They’re now trying to extort a second royalty payment from AMD and Gigabyte for coolers that they’re already getting royalties on – and this time from a company (AMD) that can barely afford it.
Asetek are extortionists and patent trolls.
I think AMD should decide that they no longer give any f*cks, and rip Asetek a new one in the press. Imagine, if you will:
8 December 2015 – AMD is announcing a temporary suspension of sales of their R9 Fury X graphics cards, after a Cease and Desist order was filed against them by Asetek, alleging that the closed-loop water cooling unit on the Fury X infringes on Asetek’s patents.
“Effective immediately, and in compliance with a Cease and Desist order from Asetek, AMD is freezing sales of Fury X graphics card products until a suitable replacement liquid cooler is found,” said an AMD spokesman. “We feel this is better for us, anyway – the Asetek-patented units were total garbage. They were a loud, high-pitched, screaming mess, as most of the initial reviews noted when the Fury X lineup originally released. It’s a problem we’d been fighting ever since, and it’s a problem we can’t fix, because it’s due entirely to the really poor design of the Asetek-patented pump. Now that Asetek is forcing us to stop using it, we have a chance to toss their terrible and noisy and unreliable pumps and put in something that actually works.”
Added the AMD spokesman, “Screw Asetek. We’re extremely glad to be rid of them.”
you and i think alike. If I was CoolerMaster I would design a new Air cooled Heatsink (even if its bulky) and tell customers to send their old coolers to Asetek (preferably in pieces). Making sure Asetek’s name becomes synonymous with “cheap” and “low quality” is one of the best ideas.
Is it not a CoolerMaster unit that’s inside, thus the issue? The CM units certainly aren’t clones of the asetek ones, especially the one on the Fury X. Though i agree that Asetek are trying to reach a bit too far. The enthusiast market they target is a smart, watchful one; it’ll remember…
According to Asetek, and according to the courts that agreed with Asetek, it’s not a CoolerMaster unit, it’s an Asetek design that CMI is passing off as a CoolerMaster design. Asetek took CMI to court claiming that CMI was using Asetek’s design without license. So, according to Asetek and American patent law, it’s an Asetek design. Therefore, AMD wouldn’t be saying anything untrue at all by saying that the Asetek design is crap, and pointing out the dozens of reviews of the Fury X that all noted that the pumps screamed very loudly and that this problem had a very detrimental effect on their product.
They’d be taking quite a financial hit in the short term, finding a new, non-Asetek design and replacing all the pumps on all the cards – probably an impossible task. Which is why they undoubtedly won’t do it – they simply can’t afford it. But if they could, it would be one massive PR suckerpunch to deliver to Asetek, one that Asetek couldn’t really do anything about (though they’d definitely try, being the patent trolls that they are.)
Asetek: We aren’t making any money off our crap coolers, so we’ve become patent trolls.